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Hauptverfasser: Ballout, Mohamad, Jassim, Serwan, Bruni, Elia
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16572
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author Ballout, Mohamad
Jassim, Serwan
Bruni, Elia
author_facet Ballout, Mohamad
Jassim, Serwan
Bruni, Elia
contents This paper presents a systematic evaluation of state-of-the-art multimodal large language models (MLLMs) on intuitive physics tasks using the GRASP and IntPhys 2 datasets. We assess the open-source models InternVL 2.5, Qwen 2.5 VL, LLaVA-OneVision, and the proprietary Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, finding that even the latest models struggle to reliably distinguish physically plausible from implausible scenarios. To go beyond performance metrics, we conduct a probing analysis of model embeddings, extracting intermediate representations at key processing stages to examine how well task-relevant information is preserved. Our results show that, depending on task difficulty, a critical vision-language misalignment can emerge: vision encoders successfully capture physical plausibility cues, but this information is not effectively utilized by the language model, leading to failures in reasoning. This misalignment suggests that the primary limitation of MLLMs in intuitive physics tasks is not the vision component but the ineffective integration of visual and linguistic information. Our findings highlight vision-language alignment as a key area for improvement, offering insights for future MLLMs development.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_16572
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Pixels to Principles: Probing Intuitive Physics Understanding in Multimodal Language Models
Ballout, Mohamad
Jassim, Serwan
Bruni, Elia
Computation and Language
This paper presents a systematic evaluation of state-of-the-art multimodal large language models (MLLMs) on intuitive physics tasks using the GRASP and IntPhys 2 datasets. We assess the open-source models InternVL 2.5, Qwen 2.5 VL, LLaVA-OneVision, and the proprietary Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, finding that even the latest models struggle to reliably distinguish physically plausible from implausible scenarios. To go beyond performance metrics, we conduct a probing analysis of model embeddings, extracting intermediate representations at key processing stages to examine how well task-relevant information is preserved. Our results show that, depending on task difficulty, a critical vision-language misalignment can emerge: vision encoders successfully capture physical plausibility cues, but this information is not effectively utilized by the language model, leading to failures in reasoning. This misalignment suggests that the primary limitation of MLLMs in intuitive physics tasks is not the vision component but the ineffective integration of visual and linguistic information. Our findings highlight vision-language alignment as a key area for improvement, offering insights for future MLLMs development.
title Pixels to Principles: Probing Intuitive Physics Understanding in Multimodal Language Models
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16572